Tag - Politics

Last Tuesday night I watched "Obama's War", PBS Frontline's
hour-long documentary about the war in Afghanistan. The main value of the
documentary was that it showed a lot of things that you don't see on other
broadcasts- and I'm not referring to the violence. Little things, like a marine
trying to communicate with a group of Afghan villagers and running into
translation issues, or the troops lazing around sans gear in the 120 degree
heat of an abandoned school, gave you a sense of what it must really be like to
be there. Now, I'm sure soldiers would laugh at the idea that someone like me
'understands' what it's like to be there (I don't profess to know that much)
but for the first time, I felt like I had gotten at least an inkling of what it
must really be like there, aside from the explosions and the television vistas
of oceans upon oceans of sand.

If I took one thing away from the program overall, it was that the war in
Afghanistan is not only different from the war in Iraq; it's like the war in
Iraq through an insane funhouse mirror, where everything is similar on multiple
levels but different in every way that truly matters. "Yeah, they're asking for
more troops in Afghanistan, but this time they have an actual PLAN for what to
do with those troops. This may seem like a pre-emptive war, because we're
trying to sort out Afghanistan in order to avoid future terror attacks, but
it's actually not pre-emptive because it's a continuation of the same war we
started eight years ago- the one that was actually in direct response to an
attack. Their current plan is based on winning the trust of the Afghan people
through kindness and respect, which would probably work were it not for the
fact that the Afghan people have been treated so arbitrarily over the course of
the war, not to mention the last several decades, that they don't believe it
when the troops say they're there to help. Instead of distracting us from a
more important subject, this war is also a shadow-war with our ally Pakistan,
who are peaceful on the surface but have been supporting the Taliban all this
time, and one way or another, we are going to have to set a precedent for how
military powers will deal with this kind of warfare, which bypasses diplomacy
or even accountability, by doing the dirty work through faceless terror
organizations," and so on.

I believe that General McChrystal is right in requesting more troops in
order to strengthen the counter-insurgency, but then I hear myself thinking
'more troops' and 'Middle East' and I want to slap myself. I know it's
different, but the failures of the Iraq war instigated a kind of paradigm shift
in how most people in the US think about war: We don't want to go into it
half-assed ever again. In fact, we don't even want to go into it
three-quarters, seven-eights-assed ever again. It would take the emergence of
swastika-emblazoned ,WWII-era Nazi's en masse from a time machine to convince
many Americans that it's worth sending any troops into any war EVER AGAIN. "Get
the troops out of Iraq and Afghanistan" has become a mantra, and many people
don't want to acknowledge the fact that those are two different things; it just
makes everything so painfully complicated.

For example, there's a lot of talk of 'nation-building' in Afghanistan, and
it was basically glossed over in Tuesday's documentary when one diplomat said
"This is Nation RE-building; there is already a Nation there." Unless you're
looking at it from a Poli-Sci perspective, that seems like meaningless
semantics, but it's critically important. When all these people say
Nation-building, what they really mean is State-building; Nation building is
virtually impossible. The sense of shared history and destiny that forms a
Nation cannot be forced; the machinery of the state that complements that
Nation is another story. It's extremely difficult to build a state without a
nation, and that's the main problem in Iraq; the place is made up of several
distinct nations who, for the most part, would be just as happy never to see
each other ever again. In Afghanistan, while the organization is primarily
tribal and local, the major conflicts in their history have not been along
ethnic lines, at least in recent decades. Left to their own devices, the Afghan
people instituted a secular, progressive government in the 1970's, which lasted
until the Soviet Invasion. Recent history attests that they don't have a
problem with the idea of being united under one government, and a secular one
at that; they just wish their current government wasn't corrupt to the point of
uselessness. In other words, we're not trying to force something on them that
they have no interest in.

Forget Religion

Another aspect of the situation that is difficult to understand is the role
of religion, although that's really more about the concept of religion as an
organizational tool than actual religious belief; another thing that "Obama's
War" did was reinforced my opinion that all of these conflicts are 99% secular,
1% religious. Money, territory, power, ethnic prestige-- these are all purely
secular concerns. The holy war concept is a useful lie, because it sounds a lot
better when you say "I'm doing this because God told me to, therefore it is
RIGHT", as opposed to "I'm tired of being one of the have-nots in this society
and my peeps have hated your peeps for eons anyways, so I don't have a problem
killing you to get ahead." Whether that's a lie for the outside world or a lie
they've internalized probably depends on the individual extremist, but it
doesn't really matter. You can blame religion all you want, but the fact of the
matter is, if we somehow woke up tomorrow to a world where religion no longer
existed, people would find another pretext to fight over money, power, and
prestige. "Jihad" isn't a philosophy, it's a meme.

Frankly, any talk about 'Jihad' at this point is a complete waste of time,
because what terrorists groups are doing has virtually no relationship with
anything in Islam. Terrorists want to hide behind the belief that there
actually is some sort of holy war going on here, and every time we talk about
their 'Jihad', we're cooperating with them. If there's anything resembling a
true Jihad going on, it's on the part of Muslims who are fighting to stop their
practical, egalitarian belief system from being defiled by all of this.

If you still don't believe that religion isn't really at the heart of any of
this, consider this: the true believer, who takes every word of their text
literally, has no reason to hurt you in this life; he BELIEVES that you will
burn in hell. Feeling the need to shoot you is a sign of true spiritual
insecurity, and it's downright embarrassing.

The Solution, such as it is

The really frustrating part for me is that there actually is a clear
solution; it's just politically unfeasible. Unfeasible to the point where I
wonder if we wouldn't be better off packing off and going home, regardless of
the fact that everything will only deteriorate further, and who knows what
consequences will stem out of that.

In the documentary, the American troops stationed themselves near a market
in order to get closer to the Afghan people; afraid of being shot by the
Taliban, the civilians abandoned that market and went to shop at a different
one, miles away. The Marines then had the unenviable task of trying to convince
the villagers, through poor interpreters, to come back to the market. The
Afghan people don't believe that the soldiers can protect them from the
Taliban, and why should they? Soldiers are dying; the marines don't have
sufficient resources to thoroughly protect themselves, let alone anyone else.
Forget about forging long-term trust and proving that the Americans are there
for the duration this time: the Afghans don't have good reason to trust the
Americans when they say "We will protect you from getting shot tomorrow."

In order to win true, deserved trust from the Afghan people, the troops have
to be able to say "We will protect you", and make it look like a no-brainer; if
the US presence were so overwhelming that you couldn't through a rock in
Afghanistan without hitting an armed marine, suddenly the idea of the soldiers
protecting the populace would have to be taken seriously. If the US presence
were such that the idea of a Taliban attack was ludicrous, because, with all
the marines around, it would be unclear whether the Taliban would have a
place to stand, we would not have to convince the Afghans of our
commitment to their safety; it would be palpable, so demonstrably true that
there would be no question. With that level of safety, there would be greater
cooperation in areas that will ensure future success- training large numbers of
Americans to speak the local languages, supporting the next generation of
Afghan artists and musicians who will promote and expand the traditional
culture and help build Afghan pride and solidarity, building schools, etc. The
impenetrable military shield would create a venue where all the things which
would truly build Afghanistan- most of which are non-military, and would
require non-military actors- would be possible on a grand scale.

If we followed this strategy, we could create a kind of sister-country in
Afghanistan, helping them to follow up on the progressive path they started on
in the 1970's, before the cold war threw everything off track and led to the
post-war troubles that spawned the Taliban. In the new Afghanistan, the Taliban
would be unwelcome; they could try to survive through their cooperation with
Pakistan, however I don't see how that could work- the Pakistani government has
been nothing if not pragmatic. If supporting the Taliban in resisting the US
would seem like a tremendous resource drain for them (which it would be, if the
US presence was on the scale that I am talking about), does anyone really doubt
that Pakistan would drop them like a hot potato? There has been much talk about
coercing Pakistan to be cooperative; in my view, we could bypass that entirely.
Just make supporting the Taliban a big enough pain in the ass for them to deal
with that it's not worth it to them anymore, and suddenly we're on the same
side.

The obvious problem here is that, in addition to the issue of getting a
war-wearied American populace to commit to a military objective on this scale
(which is probably a deal-breaker in and of itself), I don't know if the
numbers I'm envisioning here are even possible without a draft. Maybe they
would have been possible had the Iraq war not so thoroughly exhausted the
American military, but as of right now I doubt it. Of course, then I see myself
typing words like "draft", and I want to slap myself again. It's so bizarre; I
don't like the idea of large-scale military engagements one iota, but given
that this situation has already been created, committed to, and sacrificed for,
we can either do what it takes to win- an effort that will, at least in the
short term, seem like madness, and anachronistic madness at that ('didn't we
learn anything from Vietnam?' as many will say with even greater didactic
frequency')- or continue to play a waiting game, hoping that we'll get lucky
and things will somehow take a turn for the better of their own accord. I'm
afraid that without a much more significant commitment, the level of
involvement we have in Afghanistan now will do nothing except stall the
inevitable, if even that. If we send more troops, that means more Americans
sending their children off, possibly to die, on a premise that no one professes
to truly understand; if we don't, those that have died so far will have done so
for nothing, and will continue to do so in dribs and drabs until we eventually
slink away with our tail between our legs, after another decade or two of
stalling, while the terrorist nirvana that Afghanistan will have become plots
more heinous crimes against humanity.

There is no way out of this that isn't difficult and ugly; if I seem to
favor the higher-risk, go-for-broke approach, it's because that at least in
theory, that strategy could eventually create another strong, secular ally in
the region- almost like a second Israel, albeit with very different fashion and
cuisine. And if we set a precedent of rehabilitating failed states, it will
make it difficult for terrorist organizations to get a firm foothold anywhere-
could they really take advantage of the power vacuum in Country X, if in all
likelihood the US (or maybe even China) could step in at any moment? Despite
how ludicrously expensive the whole thing may sound, making a habit of turning
terrorist hotbeds into proper states means we'll be dealing with proper states
rather than terrorist hotbeds; and unlike terrorist hotbeds, dealing with
states is something America traditionally doesn't suck at.

We've been afraid of the loud bang of nuclear MAD, World War III, for a long
time. Lately, it looks increasingly like there might not be any bang, but a
series of whimpers so cacophonous they end up being louder in the end. The WWII
metaphors of the Bush Administration, used to try to justify the War in Iraq,
annoyed the hell out of me, but as with so many things, maybe they were
partially right- even more unforgivable than being flat out wrong, which we
could just ignore. You cannot apply the rules of WWII to today- the paradigms
have changed. For one thing, it's a lot harder to tell when you've won. But one
thing remains the same; if what you're fighting is truly a World War, you have
to commit.

I know; it's easy to say. "If that's what you think, why don't YOU go to
Afghanistan, missy?" Well, maybe I will- it's possible they might need English
majors there at some point. They certainly don't have much of a use for us
anywhere else.